Die Gemütlichkeit

The perfect way to take a break from the hectic student life in Copenhagen is a relaxing week at Lili's in north western Bavaria. A plane, a train, a bus and a car joined forces to deliver me to the oh-so tiny town of Karbach, near the Main river, half way between Frankfurt and Nuremberg. This is the heart of the Franken wine region, and I still say that the bst white wine in the world comes from here. The bottles come in a special trademarked shape called Bocksbeutel. Beutel in german is bag; and a goat is a Bock... I imagine you can guess the shape...

The purpose of the visit of course was to catch up with Lib before she heads into the unknown... South America for 5 months, including the first 5 weeks on her own in Argentina. I'd be mightily jealous except that I'm in Copenhagen, heading to Oslo for a weekend trip later today, and battling 'Mother Russia' a week later. Lib, I think we need a photo competition after visiting some of these places!

We enjoyed the food and wine and beer so much in Germany that I can't avoid talking about it. The grape harvesting season has just begun, and the first wine produced in the region is called Federweisser - a really early harvest and the fermenting is not complete so the bottles can't be corked; it continues to gas and fizz and it tastes like sparkling apple juice. You don't realise its got a 12% kick to it until three of you have polished off a litre. In typical Lili style, she told us on our first morning we had to go to the shops - to buy a crate of beers from the nearby private breweries. I finished about three quarters of this in my 6 days there... Lili gave me the honorary title of mundschänk, which translates to 'mouth pourer.' I was in charge of the daily alcohol decisions, which beers and wines to squeeze into the fridge in preparation for the night, and which drink should be had and when. Tough decisions.

We attempted to settle into the German pattern of eating a big hot lunch and a light cold dinner. This was partly successful. The big hot lunch was easy - wild deer, mushrooms, weißwurst, knödeln (dumplings), sauerkraut. The cold part of dinner was not too hard either - cold sausages, prosciutto, salmon, laugenbretzel bread, tomato, radish, horseraddish and 2 kinds of mustard. It was the 'light' part that we really never came close to achieving. I'm still full.

In fairness, we rode our bikes quite a way along the Main river, exploring the small towns. In one, I was stopped by an old woman who seemed to want to chat. Her only english word was coca-cola. She couldn't understand why I was in her small town, and was even more puzzled that given I was there, I wasn't staying there. At this point she asked if I wanted any coffee, lemonade or coca-cola, before telling me that she didn't have any. She may have been a little crazy.

Speaking of crazy, the Junket continues tonight with a weekend cruise to Oslo. The question really is whether to stay up all night on the boat to watch as we enter the norwegian fjord in the morning, or try to get up really early. Tough decisions.